ADVENTURES IN BIOGRAPHY.

By WillardConnely 'II. London: Werner Laurie.198 pp. 18s.

Mr. Connely is a writer of considerable recreative imagination and scholarly industry. He is the author of some half dozen books about literary personalities, mostly of the Eighteenth Century, such as Beau Nash, TheTrue Chesterfield, Sir Richard Steele, TheReign of Beau Brummell, and Brawny Wycherley. If he is the heritor of any one journalistic tradition, it is more that of the Seventeenth Century Character writers than that of Samuel Johnson's weight and penetration. This is to say that he appears to be more concerned with the clear and present impressions these personalities made upon the scenes and fellow actors of their day than with what they may mean to human philosophy, or through what processes they came to stand for what they did.

In the course of a life spent in gathering this information Mr. Connely has naturally acquired a considerable experience of matters collected by the way. Adventures In Biography records some of these incidental things and sets them before the reader along with the circumstances of discovery and the way his own mind worked. In this sense the book is autobiographical. The chapters are not confined to the Eighteenth Century, but range from "Poets in Ireland" through "Colonial Americans in Oxford and Cambridge" to "R.L.S. - A Reverie." by way of "Aftermath to a Book" and "The Hazards of Prospecting."

The treatment is easy and casual; and if the title suggests bold emprise and deeds of derring-do, perhaps it would be as well to have chosen Walpole's word and have called it "Serendipity" rather than "Adventures."